Speaker 1: 0:08

You're listening to the Talkative Toastmaster podcast. I'm your host, melanie Serplis. In this podcast, we explore how Toastmasters can help you to polish your public speaking skills, communicate with confidence and amplify your authenticity. You'll hear from my fellow Toastmasters and I how this global organization has impacted our lives for the better and how it could impact yours. Now let's get talkative.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to episode nine of the Talkative Toastmaster podcast. Today, it's my honor to be joined by my guest and fellow Toastmaster, kevin Ryan. Kevin has been a Toastmaster for 35 years and some of his highlights as a member include being the conference convener for the district 69 conference and winning the district 69 international speech contest twice. Kevin also says that Toastmasters was instrumental in helping him to establish what has been a 23 year and counting career as a professional speaker. We're in for a treat to have such an accomplished speaker share his insights. Kevin, welcome to the show. Thank you, glad to be here. Excellent. Now I can't wait to dive deep into the vast experience that you've had, but could we perhaps start where it all began, by talking about why you originally decided to join Toastmasters?

Speaker 2: 1:38

Yeah, thank you, mel. I stumbled into Toastmasters. I was working as a business representative for a electronics company in Brisbane and our manager decided that we needed better sales presentation skills and so he invited in a person by the name of Bernie Kelly. Bernie Kelly won the third place in the world championship of public speaking, I think, or around 1986, something like that, and it was. It was an interesting course, I enjoyed it, and then he twisted my arm at the end of the course and I only realized later on that he was earning money as a presenter but also being a very excellent recruiter for Interpolitosmasters at the time and I turned up and walked into this room with about 50 people in the room.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Having any idea what I walked into and I found that I enjoyed it and had lots of encouragement from Bernie. He was my professional speaker himself on moving into that area at the time and I gave me some opportunities in the professional workshops that he was doing. A couple of years I think it was within a year or so I was made the president of Interpolitosmasters only because they looked at I was willing to be on the committee and they looked at the skill sets necessary for all of the other committee members and realized that I had none of the skills necessary to fulfill the role of treasurer, secretary, vice president education or vice president membership, and so they made me president. We ran some very interesting and innovative programs at that club as well and, yeah, it got me involved in the Toastmasters world.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Okay, and do you think the fact that you were introduced right off the bat to a professional speaker did that plant the seed for you to go on to become a professional speaker?

Speaker 2: 3:37

Not at all At the time. I can remember going on to my first district conference I fell by. The name of. Jock Elliott was the emcee at that conference, and I remember sitting there for two days with my mouth agape, simply amazed that somebody could have such mastery of the stage and dreaming that at one stage I might perhaps deserve to be somewhere in the same position as him.

Speaker 2: 4:04

So no, it was only with the tap on the shoulder and the encouragement of people like him and others that eventually I entered into the contest path of Toastmasters and I spent about nine years spending every moment of my spare life trying to memorize four to seven minute speeches and competing generally, either at the district level or acting as the contest chair. So there was myself, jock Elliott and Mark Hunter who spent that nine years constantly meeting each other every district conference. I was spectacularly unsuccessful compared to those other two gentlemen who went on to do our district prayer. But I also realized that I thought that if I could have that title after my name it would give me an entree possibly into professional speaking. And I suppose I was a bit naive and I was almost maybe a parallel with the Wizard of Oz, because whilst I was unsuccessful in my attempt to win that world championship, I realized that I'd actually learn the skills that I needed along the journey without actually achieving my major goal.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Interesting. It's a great realization to have. It's about the journey, not necessarily always the destination right.

Speaker 2: 5:34

Well, it also allowed me to get a perspective on Toastmasters that maybe was a slightly different and that is I am a huge fan of the Toastmaster contest path and, mel, you asked me how far I am going down pathways and I've got to admit I'm a little bit of a naive child lost in the woods when it comes to pathways and I'm looking forward to them redesigning that. And I suppose that's because I do enough writing and preparing and delivering presentations that I don't feel the need to enter on a particular Toastmasters pathway. But what I like about the contest is it was only in Toastmaster Contests that I found myself redoing the same speech. It can be again where a Toastmaster Club becomes a comfort zone. It can also be a double-sided, double-edged sword. It helps people but it also maybe restricts our growth slightly, I feel.

Speaker 2: 6:43

Because Toastmasters has such a rich array of programs available, it's very easy to tick off one particular program and then move on to the next one, which, if I wanted to be critical, I could actually suggest that's really more of a competency model rather than an excellence model. And what I learned from having to deliver the same speech over a period of five years? What I've learned looking back now realizing that I think the story that I used in my second ever contest speech that I prepared still is the core of one of my signature stories that I use professionally nowadays. I have delivered that story thousands of times and yet every time I deliver it in front of an audience, I find a way that I can tweak it. That, I think, makes it a little bit better, and I think it's that constant refining that allows us to really hone our skills, and contest is a natural environment to be able to do that.

Speaker 1: 7:50

Definitely, and I think that's certainly the keynote speakers, the professional speakers I've heard over my time. They do have either one or a number of signature stories and that they get known for. And you're right, I do think the Toastmasters Contest Model facilitates that kind of constant refining and also I guess you're getting different feedback from different people and in a way that you may not necessarily in the early days of professional speaking you may not necessarily get that feedback, but in Toastmasters you get plenty of feedback so, yes, you do All of it well-intentioned.

Speaker 1: 8:33

Yes yes absolutely.

Speaker 2: 8:35

And that's the great thing about Toastmasters is that everyone in the audience wants you to succeed. Perhaps, maybe with a slight modification of when you're trying to support your club of representative at the district conference. Yes, but you obviously want everyone up on the stage to succeed. And then, when you move into professional speaking, you find out that that is not actually a common sentiment amongst the audience members, and that's a brutal shock, that conquering can massively improve your confidence. Obviously.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Yeah, that's an interesting perspective and I suppose not one that a lot of Toastmasters would see if they're not moving out of that nice safe haven of Toastmasters into the realm of professional speaking. So how has that transition been for you? You've obviously been speaking a long time professionally now, but those years when you were transitioning, how did that go for you?

Speaker 2: 9:36

The biggest shock, Mel, was to realise that my client was not my audience.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Right.

Speaker 2: 9:42

With Toastmasters.

Speaker 2: 9:42

Our client is our audience.

Speaker 2: 9:44

Our job is to please the audience in a contest, maybe to please the judges as well, but generally, if you can manage to please the audience, then you'll be pleasing the judges.

Speaker 2: 9:55

In professional speaking, I learned fairly early on, particularly in corporate speaking, that managers and CEOs will generally hire me to say things to their staff that they've been saying for many years and have been unsuccessful at convincing them, and so they think by paying an outsider to come in, somehow they're going to be convinced, and so it's recognising that. It's walking out there and recognising that if I let them know I'm going to be speaking about this, I'm going to get the folded arms and the eyes rolled to the ceiling and all the sort of negativity and they'll start pulling out their phones and checking their emails and I'm not going to be successful at all. So that is the greatest challenge, and I think what can also give us the greatest success is to come out there and address an issue that maybe people have become very cynical about and be able to transform the way that they see that particular, that particular factor, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 11:03

Yeah, yeah, definitely, but it can be daunting talking to a tough crowd, you know a cynical, tough crowd that aren't necessarily cheering when you get up on the stage and clapping when you finish.

Speaker 2: 11:17

Mel, I can remember talking in North Queensland, realising the fact, because I had spent some time in North Queensland and I was very aware of the attitude of people from North Queensland to those of us who come from the capital city, and I was going to be speaking to a group of primary producers and please excuse the language, but I opened with this line. I'm just looking around the room here and I'm going to take a wall of stab in the dark that many of you at the moment are wondering. What on earth could a fast talking smart ass from Brisbane possibly know about our industry?

Speaker 1: 11:53

Yeah, yeah, you've got to meet them where they're at right, Exactly.

Speaker 2: 11:57

So, and once I was able to recognise and let them know that I knew what was going on, I could say pretty much anything I want, and at the end the conference organiser came up to me and said it was really excellent what you said. It was a really difficult message that they needed to hear and. I'm really glad that you were able to give it to them. And I said why do you think it was best for me to give it to them? They said because you're on a plane out of here tonight.

Speaker 2: 12:25

And the rest of us have to stay here and live with them.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:28

I also realised that that's sometimes the role that we are meant to play. You understand that role. Are you going to be there? Are you going to be their friend? Are you going to be their advocate? Are you going to be their challenger?

Speaker 1: 12:41

Are you?

Speaker 2: 12:41

going to be the person that gives them that difficult message. Yeah, others don't really want to articulate.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Yeah, definitely, and also, I think, the nature of professional speaking or being able to structure arguments and concepts and just might be the way that people receive the message in that different way. It's that's part of the training, I guess, as Toastmasters, and professional speaking it's delivering the message in a way that somehow cuts through.

Speaker 2: 13:12

Well, it's all entirely complimentary, Mel, and as one of the main areas I'm working in now is in storytelling, and you'll see, nowadays there are CEOs that will pay serious funds to learn the principles of storytelling. Now I've spoken about storytelling because I work in the area of sales and business communication for over 25 years. It's only in the last five years that I've called it storytelling. Before then it used to be called the science of the business narrative Right yes.

Speaker 2: 13:47

Which is a very fancy way for storytelling. Storytelling If I said I specialized in storytelling, people thought that I was going to use funny voices and wear silly hats and start with once upon a time and end with happily ever after. And business people will say I don't have time to listen to stories. Just give me the facts. And I have realized now that the best way to engage people, but also the best way to get people to change their minds about issues where they are stuck, is with an effective story. And so the storytelling that is at the core of Toastmasters right from your icebreaker is still the most fundamental skill.

Speaker 2: 14:29

And you mentioned about our keynote speakers and our professional speakers and their keynote stories, or what we call their signature stories. And let me tell you, mel, I'm in our professional speakers Australia or the National Speakers Association of Australia, who are brutal about plagiarism, as you can imagine. Yes, but hearing somebody use somebody else's content maybe their structure or the way that they devise something you definitely don't get too upset about that, because you're moving on anyhow, and the structures that I was using five years ago are not the structures that I'm using today anyhow. But on the one or two occasions when somebody in professional speaking has been identified as using somebody else's signature story. They are generally hauled up in front of an ethics committee and they've actually been asked to leave the association.

Speaker 2: 15:28

Wow, professional speakers treasure their signature stories more than any other aspect, because it's what makes us unique. It's what causes somebody to choose me rather than somebody else, and I would encourage Toastmasters what I did when I was looking at maybe transitioning across in the last couple of years, that I was working and looking to move across with my Toastmaster speeches, I decided right, I'm still focusing on five to seven minute speeches, but I worked on the first speeches going to be the first one third of my signature story. The second speech is going to be the second one third and the third is going to be the final part of it, and so I was working on that for 20 minutes. I'd encourage any Toastmasters looking to move outside their Toastmaster club develop a 20 minute presentation. That's what you need to go and speak outside your Toastmasters club.

Speaker 2: 16:27

If you want to go and speak to community groups. If you want to speak at events, you need a 20 minute keynote presentation that you can offer them. That's what a message.

Speaker 1: 16:37

Yeah, and I think that's one of the level four or level I think it's the level four or level five end of the Pathways project where you get to do that. But the rest are the five to seven minute speeches typically. So, yeah, even constructing that longer of a speech and practicing delivering it. There's not a lot of places where you actually get the opportunity to even practice that kind of a speech, certainly not in the workplace. You don't really get the chance to practice it. Normally you just thrown in the deep end and they say go present something. So Toastmasters, at least gives you that safe space to practice the material.

Speaker 2: 17:15

Certainly and I mean if you're in the club, we're talking to the program organizer and asking them for a 20 minute spot on the program causes them to give a look of fear.

Speaker 2: 17:26

Then use your either get together in the room or use the Zoom environment. Get four or five other members of your club together and ask them to cast the audience for your 20 minute presentation. Yeah, yeah, mel, practicing a presentation in your workplace can be a very career limiting activity and I would never recommend that people do that, but there are opportunities to practice. I'd encourage Toastmasters to get their own what you might call mastermind group group of four or five other Toastmasters that are at about the same level of development as them and get together occasionally practice their presentations. I have my own small group of colleagues that I've developed over the years. I would never take a new presentation out to an audience without running it past them first. Toastmasters has connected us with people who are interested in that area and have certain perspectives that can be very useful. I think that as a natural path, and also, again, this is my challenge to Toastmasters I believe nobody ever joined Toastmasters so as they could speak more confidently to a Toastmasters club.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Yes, you're right.

Speaker 2: 18:41

They joined Toastmasters so they could speak more confidently out in public. And then I have found sometime getting Toastmasters to go out and speak in public can be the most difficult thing. We at our club, we run youth leadership programs, we run speech craft courses, and I'll go up to our maybe not so experienced members, but the members who I think are ready for that next step, and say right, I'd like you to do a 10 minute presentation on, maybe, how to do an evaluation or how to put together a structure, a particular presentation. And I really have to twist their arms sometimes to get them to do that and I'm trying to remind them come on, isn't this why you joined Toastmasters in the first place? Yeah, don't let the comfort zone become a limiting factor for you.

Speaker 1: 19:26

Yeah, it's so interesting that, whether it's going to competitions or going and exploring other clubs or being a test speaker for other clubs, is just that some of the ways you can continue to grow, because I think part of the challenge is that some of the Toastmasters clubs are so supportive and they can feel like family. It can feel like speaking in front of a family get together at you know once you've been there for a while and you know everyone and you've heard them all speak a few times it has that family feel, which is lovely and supportive. But in terms of extending yourself, as you say, it's how to keep challenging yourself.

Speaker 2: 20:07

And you reminded me when you mentioned going out being a test speaker. While I think contests are fantastic because I also think contests are one of the few times that many toastmasters get to speak on a stage speaking area One thing I've noticed with a lot of toastmasters is they're very comfortable standing in the one spot, but when all of a sudden they're given a full stage and asked to decide how much of that stage will I use, how will I use that stage positioning to enhance my performance? It's just not an environment that they've experienced. They don't often get that particular opportunity at their club. So I'd encourage clubs, if you can, widen the speaking area to give your speakers more chance to use a broader space. But also, once you go into contests, get to know the stage.

Speaker 2: 20:57

I mean the things that I learned and again I want to pay full credit to that brilliant gentleman, jock Elliott.

Speaker 2: 21:02

The first time I went over to the stage to represent our district I was so lucky that he was actually going to the conference at the same time the things that he told me, the things that he showed me, that the extra training that I got I mean he got me to go out there and think about what I was wearing, and it never occurred to me to think about what I was wearing on a stage before he got me to go out and do voice training. It had never occurred to me to do voice training before. How stupid is that when that's what he gets all the time at Toastmasters. But I thought, no, I've done Master your Voice in the CTM program. I know all about that. And he got me out to work for months with a theatrical voice coach, which totally transformed the way I use my voice in front of an audience. And so those experiences that we get from the experienced Toastmasters I think we need to open ourselves up to.

Speaker 1: 22:00

And so even you've been a Toastmaster for 35 years now. What would you most enjoy now? Because I'm guessing it's a different experience than it was when you first started and you have a different perspective. But what do you enjoy about being a Toastmaster these days?

Speaker 2: 22:15

The discipline. I came back to Toastmasters. I mean, okay, I spent about 20 years, and 12 years of those, most of my speaking was overseas, and so, once I remained a member of Toastmasters, I didn't get along to too many Toastmasters meetings. When 2020 came along, I was actually at the professional speakers conference in March 2020, one of the most depressing conferences anybody could ever attend, because that was the weekend when we all became aware of the lockdowns. I lost 35 speaking engagements in one weekend.

Speaker 1: 22:47

Oh right.

Speaker 2: 22:47

I've started the conference boasting to everyone that I had the most successful diary in my entire career and ended it with everyone else saying I've got no idea how I'm going to support myself for the rest of this year. I'm actually now the National Accreditation Manager for Professional Speaking Australia. I know some professional speakers, many who have come through the Toastmaster path. I know other professional speakers who are excellent stage presenters and have never entered a Toastmaster meeting, and I can say with great confidence that those who have never used Toastmasters could be better speakers if they went to Toastmaster.

Speaker 2: 23:34

And the reason I came back and put myself into the program at Toastmasters was number one. I felt that I could add to our club's flexibility with the experience I'd had in the hybrid environment. But also I realized when people ask me to come along to a Toastmasters club and I'd say how long have I got? They'd say, oh, we'll give you 10 minutes. I go only 10 minutes. It takes me 10 minutes to introduce myself. What are you talking about? And I realized that in that area I'd become a little bit lazy. And so I thought let's force myself to get back to do a five to seven minute speech again. Let's force myself to learn the sharpness and the discipline of being able to put things together like that rather than thinking well, I've got 45 minutes, so eventually I'll get to something that's interesting to the audience. I'll just start and see where we go, and I'm embarrassed to admit that that has happened sometimes, mel.

Speaker 1: 24:30

So how do you go with table topics where you've got two to three minutes?

Speaker 2: 24:36

Again challenge myself. I've got a couple of ideas with table topics that I want to, as I said, and if you look at our YouTube channel, we did a session on improvisational skills for Toastmasters One of the things where we're starting to introduce the interviews, like I mentioned before. But also I'm looking at maybe running impromptu debates in the club. Getting people to do a table topic where they have to do the entire table topic about a particular subject without saying a certain word. Looking at finding a way that I can develop a two minute table, a generic table topic that can be used to answer any question without knowing what the question is and yet the answer will actually think it's a satisfactory answer to that question.

Speaker 1: 25:25

OK, there's definitely a potential formula there. I can see kind of what you're getting at, because I think it's a structural thing that you can just plug a content into or a message into, but it's just being able to cement that in your mind and then being able to apply it for any topic.

Speaker 2: 25:43

That's so perceptive, mel, because you're quite right, and I probably never thought about it that way before. But it's all structure. And when I've looked at those speakers, I can remember when I first started seeing other professional speakers and I'd see someone on the stage and they were really excellent and I'd asked them how long had they been in Toastmasters and they said they hadn't. And it was outside my understanding. I thought how on earth could you get to that level of mastery without having gone to Toastmasters, which was again indicative of my narrow perspective regarding that. But having said that, when I've spoken to those people and got to know them a little bit better, I realized they work very, very hard to develop structures for themselves that they probably could have learned in their third speech at Toastmasters. Yes, so all of the structures, all of the basics are all there, and that's why I said anybody who's looking at going out there and maybe getting paid for their speaking if they don't do Toastmasters, they've just made the path more difficult for themselves than it needs to be.

Speaker 1: 26:50

Yeah, and it's an interesting perspective because you're sort of saying that Toastmasters can be a training ground for people that potentially might want to move into professional speaking and similarly, if people are already professional speakers, to come into the Toastmasters organization to almost retrofit the basics and go back into the basics. So you sort of sit right there in the middle of you've seen both paths, I suppose. So it's interesting that you can see how Toastmasters can be central to both, are useful to both.

Speaker 2: 27:25

And it's not just professional speaking Mel, it's being in the community. It's getting back to what I think Ralph Smedley founded the organization for in the first place, which was with greater confidence and greater level of communication out there in our community. To me, toastmasters serves its purpose not so much in the area of helping people become professional speakers but in helping people go out there and being better representatives in their community, in being able to speak more confidently at the PNC or PNF meetings and being willing to volunteer for the Heart Foundation or the Cancer Council, to go out there and be a community speaker, to volunteer as one of the RUOK ambassadors out there.

Speaker 2: 28:10

So all of the opportunities to go out there and spread a really important message using your Toastmasters skills. And to me, that's why I believe Ralph Smedley started Toastmasters, not to create a social organization where we can get together every two weeks and talk to each other.

Speaker 1: 28:29

Yes, I think there's an end point. I mean, as you say, people don't go along to Toastmasters to get confident in speaking to other Toastmasters. It's to get a message out or, you know, it might be they've got a wedding coming up or a big business meeting or presentation. They have to deliver and that's, I guess, the starting point for them.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Very much so my main area in whilst I teach presentation skills, I would recommend anybody postmaster looking at going out there to offer themselves to the corporate market means to be a little bit more specific than I can help you become a more confident presenter. Otherwise the people will go off and spend the few dollars necessary to do a spacecraft course. I would recommend if any toastmasters want to use their Toastmaster skills to go out into the corporate world, you need to get very specific about the areas that you can add. So, for example, my background was in sales and customer service and so that's what I spoke about doing sales presentations. And I was able to present myself to businesses saying if I can help you to do a more successful sales presentation, and that means it's more likely for you to get the business, how much will that be? I'll bag you to you.

Speaker 2: 29:43

And then that's gone even further now to where I pretty well only work with people now in presentations where the presentations are heavy with data. I work a lot with engineers. I work a lot with accountants and financial experts when they've got a lot of data and they want to make the data compelling. So I actually say how can you? No one's ever been convinced by an Excel spreadsheet. How can you make your data persuasive? A space of use of data which is a very specific niche. Yes, I'll put myself into.

Speaker 1: 30:25

And is that where the element of storytelling comes in. It's telling the story of that data in a compelling way.

Speaker 2: 30:30

Definitely yeah. It's about recognizing the fact that there are two parts of our brain that need to be convinced and, whilst the data will satisfy the logical part of our brain, the emotional part of our brain, which is the part of our brain responsible for decision making, is going to be triggered by the images and the emotions that we can put into their mind. That has to be done with stories.

Speaker 1: 30:56

And I think it will become. That particular niche will become particularly more important because there is so much data out there. There is no shortage of data, in fact, there's an overwhelm of data but I think the stories will have to become more compelling to cut through all the noise out there in corporate land or any land, to make that data thing really to do justice, to get the point across. So I think that what might now be a niche will explode because it's so much data.

Speaker 2: 31:30

Michael Melbert again are very perceptive when I look at the whole point behind this. And again, because my background was initially in sales and recently actually yesterday I was engaged by a client. And again, I still teach sales skills but they're not allowed to be called sales. I recently did a big program for Asia's largest legal firm 800 lawyers Wow, the brief there was I want you to teach my lawyer's sales skills, but I never want you to mention the word sales.

Speaker 1: 32:03

Okay.

Speaker 2: 32:05

Because that's what happens with a lot of professionals. I tend to work with people. Why accountancy and engineering? Because they are in law, because they are business models where people, during the partnership, they get all of their professional work handed to them and they finally get to the stage where they're offered a partnership and along with that partnership comes a requirement to bring in a certain amount of business to be able to justify that. And unfortunately these are people whose networking skills are not necessarily at the highest level. People with high level interpersonal skills unfortunately don't often end up in engineering and so or accountancy.

Speaker 2: 32:48

I wish you could be critical of those professions In fact, I'm not critical of them but they'll be very open in saying that that is not their primary skill set. That's right. They also realize that if they want to be able to move beyond where they are at the moment, they really need to be able to improve that. And when we looked at what was stopping people being able to make decisions in today's world which is getting back to the point that you initially mentioned one of the biggest problems is information overload. We simply have too much information. We can't curate that information. We can't prioritize that information to allow it to put us into a more confident position to make a decision.

Speaker 2: 33:28

We actually a lot of people give their clients more information than they need. I wonder why the clients can't make a decision. All they do is actually chase their clients away because they have to go away and try and make sense of the new information that you've just given them. So it's about how do we take a whole suite of data and narrow that down to the key points that the audience will understand, that can allow them to confidently move forward in a decision-making process that they need to do, and once you can identify that, then it's simply a case of what data do we need and how do we incorporate that into the figures? Very interesting area. I'm actually a member of the Data Visualization Society, which is the biggest bunch of geeks in the entire planet who spend their life putting together fascinating infographics to help people make sense of data.

Speaker 1: 34:32

I love infographics. I'm a big fan of them and I remember when they came out maybe what five, ten years ago I don't know when they first started to come out, but I remember just being fascinated by them and how much thinking needs to go into compressing so much data and information into a one-pager. And I think that's to some extent part of what Toastmasters in a way can help with it's distilling all that information and jamming into a five to seven-minute speech, for example.

Speaker 1: 35:03

Right now yeah, yeah, you know, 45 minutes for some people is quite easy for them to speak. For some people that might terrify them. The thought of having to speak for 45 minutes might send them into a complete tailspin. But actually compressing a message into five to seven minutes is quite a skill.

Speaker 2: 35:23

There was that famous quote from Winston Churchill when he was asked to come and talk to a school. I'm sure you've heard that. He said if I have to speak for an hour, I only very little notice. But if you want, mommy, just speak for ten minutes, Give me at least two weeks' notice.

Speaker 1: 35:38

Absolutely, and it's not dissimilar to copywriting when you've got to write a five-word headline versus a thousand-word blog or a thousand-word article. Thousand-word article for me much easier, the headline hard.

Speaker 2: 35:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:53

And so sort of. Back to Toastmasters. What would you say to people out there who might have heard about Toastmasters or whose boss may have said you should go to Toastmasters but they're nervous about giving it a go? What would you say to that group of the community?

Speaker 2: 36:11

I would suggest that they identify a club that meets in a hybrid environment and visit the club from their bedroom, from their home. In the first place, because I think it's very, very easy for those of us who've been Toastmasters for a long time to lack the empathy and, regardless of how friendly and welcoming we think we are, we lose touch with how damn intimidating it is simply to walk into a room full of Toastmasters who are all looking friendly and all get on with each other and who we perceive as being obviously much more confident than us and also not knowing what's expected of us.

Speaker 1: 36:59

Yes, it can be daunting, and I was just sort of thinking back to when you said you went into the Indooroopilly Club and there was 55 members. That's a massive club. That must have been daunting.

Speaker 2: 37:10

When I became the president and we still had close to 60 members, Holy moly, it was a bigger problem than having a club with low membership. To be honest. Yeah, we seriously considered moving our club to a weekly event.

Speaker 2: 37:27

So we'd say some of us will be on the first Tuesday, some of us will meet on the second Tuesday and of course, no one ever wanted to join the second, so it was a crowd control issue and it was again because Bernie was an absolute brilliant promoter. He would bring in 10 guests at every event. So I suppose that was again. It made it a little bit less intimidating because you weren't the only guest there. Yes, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 38:02

But, I would encourage people to come along, as we do at our club, and let them know that there is no expectation for them to say anything. Totally welcome, just to sit there and observe. We won't even unless they feel comfortable. We'll check with them at the break and see if they want to make a comment at the end. If not, we won't even ask them because if we realise that's going to be an intimidatory factor, that they're then coming back next time.

Speaker 1: 38:31

And.

Speaker 2: 38:32

I thought, mel, there have been times when I've convinced people to do table topics. If I slip them the table topics 10 minutes beforehand, it being their first table topic, and not telling anybody else in the meeting that I've done that, allowing them to impress everyone that they're improvisational skills.

Speaker 1: 38:50

Yeah, look, and I think any win we can give a new guest, any little success that we can encourage them with. I mean, that's part of, I think, what the value of Toastmasters brings, that we want to see people win. We want to see them ultimately speaking, but not pressure them into doing that.

Speaker 2: 39:09

Well, yeah, I mean I've got a 35 year membership of Toastmasters and also not only my career over the last 23 years, but also that the position I had for 10 years before that I totally accredit to Toastmasters and would never have happened If I hadn't had a couple of experienced Toastmasters tap me on the shoulder and say you're good, you can go further with this.

Speaker 2: 39:33

That never occurred to me. So I think it's the wisdom of those people who can encourage others and see things that maybe they can't see, allow them to take on that particular path and, again, let your business know that you're a Toastmaster and, unlike that example I mentioned before, be prepared to promote that. In the 10 years before I went out on my own, I was headhuntered to work for a company, and the reason I was headhuntered? Because the company previous to that knew I was a Toastmaster and thought oh, all right, we need to do a product launch, we need to do a client evening. We'll get Kevin to emcee it because we know he can do it and put me up on the stage in an environment that made me look good. On one of those particular events, one of our biggest clients came up to me and said we're looking to headhunt somebody to take our business to the next level. We think you could be the person Perfect. It was only my experience in Toastmasters that put me there in the first place.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Yeah, and I think that's the interesting thing you never quite know how, when you put yourself out there, as terrifying as it might be at the time, you know what opportunities will come from that. You know who's paying attention to you as a speaker out there. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:51

Two days ago I locked in a project again for persuasive presentation skills for a group of medical professionals and that came about by the CEO ringing me and saying I saw you speak 15 years ago in Lutwycz and I remembered you and I think you'd be the person to come in and help out our team. To be honest, I don't even remember speaking at Lutwycz.

Speaker 1: 41:18

You obviously did.

Speaker 2: 41:21

As you said, you just put yourself out there and people will see the value.

Speaker 1: 41:25

Awesome, and so is there anything else that you'd like to say to the audience before we wrap up about? You know Toastmasters, or the impact it's had on your life, or the impact it might have on theirs.

Speaker 2: 41:37

Just to mention a way that I think people could use their Toastmaster expertise. When I first moved across to this new company, they said we need to move into new industries, and I realized that our company needed to get some profile in those industries, and so what I did was I identified all of the professional conferences done by that particular industry and I offered myself as a speaker to those conferences. Now I had to convince the conference organizers that, even though I was a supplier to the industry, I would not violate the privilege of the platform. I would not use it as a time to promote myself or my company. I would give them a 45-minute presentation with particular industry insights that I had researched and then at the end of that presentation, I would simply say and if anybody's interested in hearing more about this, come and see me at booth number 25 in the trade display area.

Speaker 2: 42:34

And, mel, I'm very proud of the fact that within 18 months we had 80% market penetration, and I think a lot of it was because I was perceived as an industry expert. I would actually have industry magazines call me up and ask me for insights in the area that we were working in, simply because I've been a conference speaker, and it was mainly because I'd gone to the conference organizers. I said I've achieved a high level in Toastmaster Conferences. You can be confident, I'm going to get up there and give you a good presentation. And not all of them, but a number of them gave me a profile because of my Toastmaster's experience that allowed me to significantly build a business that we would not have been able to do otherwise.

Speaker 1: 43:22

Okay. Well, kevin, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you and hear about how you know that starting at Toastmasters and where it's taken you, and how you're now sort of giving back through training in that capacity and inspiring audiences, no doubt around the world I mean, if you're talking with lawyers and accountants, and that they're pretty tough crowds to be contending with. So it's been fascinating to hear how you started as a Toastmaster and you weren't necessarily thinking that that's where it was going to take you. So really appreciate you sharing your insights with us today and wish you all the best for 2024. And thanks once again for joining me on today's show.

Speaker 2: 44:07

Well, mel, just like I could never foresee where my Toastmasters experience might take me, congratulations to you for starting this series of podcasts, and I think you can't possibly imagine where this is going to take you as well.

Speaker 1: 44:20

I guess we'll see Well, report back. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2: 44:25

Lovely to talk to you, thank you.

Speaker 1: 44:35

Thanks for listening to today's show. Head to talkativetoastmastercom, where you'll find the show notes for this and all other episodes, as well as links to some awesome Toastmasters resources. If you found valuing today's content, I'd really appreciate if you could share it with friends and colleagues who may be interested, or leave a review on iTunes. This helps more people to find us. Until next time, remember the words of DH Lawrence Be still when you have nothing to say, but when genuine passion moves, you say what you've got to say and say it hot. Have a great week.